Revolt of youth against authority

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32588, 23 April 1971, Page 10

Revolt of youth against authority

Economically, the colossal waste of human resources resulting from neurotic illness was the worst problem facing New Zealand today, the senior regional psychologist for the Justice Department (Mr H. S. Cohen) said yesterday.

In an address to a meeting of the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration, he said that such wasteage was economically far more important in the long run than whether New Zealand entered the Common Market.

He was speaking on the revolt of youth and its effect on authority. He said that one of the most impressive and frightening facts about young people today, particularly among the most intelligent, was that they were frightened. They were not reasisured about the values round (which their civilisation revolved. They were disinterested in the future and pessimistic i about it. They felt helpless about their own fate. INCREASING ANGER

A breakdown in child nurture while other basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter were being met, meant that children were growing up anxious, neglected, and emotionally disturbed. Now it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that ignorance and apathy had resulted in a world-wide situation of increasing anger between young people and what many of them chose to call the Establishment, he said. The revolt, which had been generally accepted as part of adolescence, was now tending towards an unnatural and i persisting course, Mr Cohen'. said. “It strikes me that administration has always relied unthinkingly on tradition and cultural 'stability to ensure that sons grow up like fathers, and daughters like mothers.”

But he said these stabilising forces were less effective today. AUTHORITY FAILING

Young people today were aware that an excessive preoccupation with wealth, power, and prestige, was a sign of neurotic illness, and they were determined to have none of it. This was disturbing authority because as a control mechanism of behaviour, it was failing. Administration everywhere did not have the tools to deal repressively with revolt. Still less was it able to deal constructively and helpfully.

He said that crime was increasing everywhere. A study of prisoners who had been committed to Paparua Prison for a term of more than six months had shown a direct connection between a disturbed outlook of long standing and the commission of the crime.

“I have spoken to administrators who have said that they believe administration—unprepared and ill-equipped and hidebound and unwilling as always to change—has got it coming to it, and had brought the present unrest,” he said. “There are signs that many influential people have been reassessing their values.”

One thing was certain—authority had to stop treating rebellious youth like a minority group, said Mr Cohen. He criticised the news media for publicising youth protest and revolt, and said that prisoners at Paparua had suggested that the way to stop rebellious youth congregating was to stop publicising it in the newspapers.